Tongue cleaning instruments of various kinds are per se known. For example, U.S. Design Pat. Nos. 367,707 and 377,417 describe manually operated razor blade-type tongue scrapers; U.S. Design Pat. Nos. 301,372 and 4,488,328 disclose loop-type tongue scrapers. Other kinds, such as brush-type instruments and combined toothbrush and tongue scrapers, are also known.
The main disadvantages of the above-mentioned and other kinds of tongue scraping instruments reside in the fact that due to their basic inappropriate construction, these instruments do not satisfactorily fulfill their task. The known manually operated razor blade-type scrapers, having a larger dimension perpendicular to the direction of movement along the tongue, do not properly clean the side surface portions of the tongue, nor are they fit to clean the back portion of the tongue, at least without the danger of wounding the delicate tissues inside the mouth. Another shortcoming of these prior art instruments resides in the fact that the scraped-off, bacteria-containing material spreads throughout the oral cavity and is thus not properly removed.
It is therefore a broad object of the present invention to provide a tongue scraping and cleaning device having an optimized ergonomic structure.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a tongue scraping and cleaning device having improved scraping and cleaning capability and efficiency.